Welcome to the magical kingdom of Illinois!

Riddle me this: when is a carpetbagger not a carpetbagger? When he’s the son of the incumbent, of course! From the Chicago Tribune:

Lipinski makes retirement official

U.S. Rep. William Lipinski, a conservative Democrat from Chicago’s Southwest Side, said today he is retiring at the end of his term in January after 22 years in Congress and will be supporting his son to take his spot on the November ballot.

Lipinski, 66, said he would submit his letter of withdrawal later today with the Illinois State Board of Elections.

“I want to come back to Chicago and spend more time with my wife,” Lipinski said. “When you live three days in one city and four days in another, it takes you away. I want to slow down the march of time.”

Lipinski said he is leaving, in part, because he is confident a massive transportation bill he has labored on for more than a year will be passed by Congress before he leaves office. The bill will pump hundreds of millions of dollars over six years into projects in the Chicago region

Democratic Party bosses are expected to select the congressman’s replacement at a meeting Tuesday. Lipinski’s son, Daniel, who until recently was a political science professor at the University of Tennessee, is the favorite to take his father’s place.

Daniel Lipinski has worked for a number of congressmen over the years, including Gov. Rod Blagojevich when he served on Capitol Hill, and received his doctorate in political science from Duke University.

“He has a terrific academic background in terms of Congress and he can come in and know all about it on the first day,” William Lipinski said. “He’s also very much in touch with the 3rd Congressional District, having grown up here, gone to grade school and high school in the district.”

Professor Lipinski received his doctorate from Duke in 1998 and was an Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee. For a list of his recent publications see here. I haven’t found anything that suggests an interest in Illinois politics or his future district in his publications. And he hasn’t lived in the district in his adult life.

The Illinois 3rd District is a solid, safe Democratic seat so Lipinski’s replacement will be a Democrat under any circumstances. It went 58/40 for Gore in 2000. But the mechanics and timing of Lipinski’s retirement are engineered to ensure that his son will replace him in Congress. From the Opinion Journal:

Normally, such a brazen switcheroo would be difficult, even in machine-ruled Chicago. But if Mr. Lipinski withdraws from his re-election race before August 26, his successor would be selected by the city’s Democratic ward committeemen. Rep. Lipinski just happens himself to be the Democratic committeeman for the city’s 23rd ward, and other wards are controlled by allies of Mayor Daley, state House Speaker Michael Madigan or Tom Hynes, a former state Senate president. All of them would be, shall we say, understanding on the issue of nepotism. Mayor Daley’s father was, of course, the legendary Mayor Richard J. Daley. Mr. Madigan’s daughter, Lisa, is Illinois attorney general and Mr. Hynes’ son, Dan, is the state comptroller.

Some have found this move arrogant. From Kristen McQueary’s column in the Daily Southtown:

Dan Lipinski is a 30-something academic little known by those who will be appointing him to the ballot. Some met him briefly at his recent wedding; others haven’t met him at all. After years of schooling, he has been teaching political science at University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

His out-of-state residency is one reason at least one committeeman considers Congressman Lipinski’s move “arrogant.”

At least with other sons and daughters plucked for elected office, they lived in Chicago and had to actually run for office: Lisa Madigan, Kevin Joyce, Dan Hynes. They sat through newspaper editorial boards. They walked parades and endured news conferences. They stomached countless chicken dinners and baby-kissing.

The feeling among the decision-makers is that Dan Lipinski may be bright as the North Star, but he hasn’t paid his dues.

I am a democrat with a small “d” and a republican with a small “r” and I find the idea of a hereditary political class completely repellant. For me the sons and daughters of elective office holders are uniquely disqualified for office. Did I feel this way about George W. Bush in 2000? Absolutely. And I will feel exactly the same way if Jeb Bush runs for the presidency in 2008.

James Madison, the author of Federalist 39 writes:

What, then, are the distinctive characters of the republican form? Were an answer to this question to be sought, not by recurring to principles, but in the application of the term by political writers, to the constitution of different States, no satisfactory one would ever be found. Holland, in which no particle of the supreme authority is derived from the people, has passed almost universally under the denomination of a republic. The same title has been bestowed on Venice, where absolute power over the great body of the people is exercised, in the most absolute manner, by a small body of hereditary nobles. Poland, which is a mixture of aristocracy and of monarchy in their worst forms, has been dignified with the same appellation. The government of England, which has one republican branch only, combined with an hereditary aristocracy and monarchy, has, with equal impropriety, been frequently placed on the list of republics. These examples, which are nearly as dissimilar to each other as to a genuine republic, show the extreme inaccuracy with which the term has been used in political disquisitions.

Illinois, like the Venice, Poland, and England of which Madison writes, is a republic in name only. If you believe that I’m exaggerating, the governor of my state is the son-in-law of a Chicago alderman, the mayor of my city is the son of a previous mayor, and my alderman is the daughter of the previous alderman.

Welcome to the kingdom of Illinois!